Congratulations to our SEM runners Claire Agee and Tomisin Ogunfunmi at the Townview Turkey Trot sponsored by the Physical Education Department! All students could participate by signing up in the gym for the annual fun run held after school on Thursday, November 15, 2018. The participants ran the “Townview Mile”, a course designed around the Townview campus. Top 8 places received a turkey or a pie! Save the date for next year and see you at the Turkey Trot run!

Congratulations to SEM senior Amanda Blewett for being named to the 1st team – All District! Amanda is a crucial team member on the Woodrow Wilson High School Varsity Volleyball team! Amanda wears #8, and her sister Elizabeth (TAG junior) wears #5 and was named to the 2nd team – All District. Congratulations to Amanda and Elizabeth! (Amanda is pictured third from the right)

Congratulations to the Cedar Hill Longhorn football team for winning the 2018 Division 7-6A championship! Science and Engineering’s own, Offensive Guard, RJ Taylor is a member the team. The team fought hard and achieved its goal to sit atop its division.

Although no longer in the running for the state championship, the ‘District of Doom’ left it all on the field, with no regrets. Great job RJ and the Cedar Hill Longhorns! Link to the Dallas Morning News story here

On October 27th, 2018 UT Dallas Computer Science Department conducted a statewide “Battle of the Brains: High School Programming Contest”. About 135 teams competed in this 3-hour competition and the School of Science and Engineering was represented by two students, Jacob Acosta in the advanced division and Arjun Vikram in the novice division. Arjun received first place in the novice division.

Fourteen Dallas ISD students have been named among the 16,000 National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists, with a chance to become one of the 7,500 finalists who will take home scholarships worth a combined $31 million.

More than 90 percent of the semifinalists are expected to reach the finals, with about half of the finalists earning a National Merit Scholarship.

School of Science and Engineering National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists are:

School of Science and Engineering Miss Ruth Nichols and Miss Mariam Joseph from the class of 2019 finished creating a graphic novel during the summer of 2018 that explains Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The graphic novel is free to view in full online at sciwarebiomed1.blogspot.com. The graphic novel is a project under the SciWare Books nonprofit company that Ruth Nichols and Mariam Joseph helped form in the summer of 2017.

Saumya Rawat won another highly competitive $3,300 grant from the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) to host free app development programs this summer. Recently she hosted 2 day weekend workshop sessions at UTD for middle school girls from underrepresented areas. More than 100 Girls from all over the DFW areas learned robotics using Scribblers, met student and professional mentors, explored STEM career options, and interacted with the FRC Robobusters Townview Robotics Team robots.

Sasha Thomas received the Jose “Joe” May Scholarship, named after the former Dallas ISD trustee, which is awarded to the Superintendent’s Scholarship recipient with the highest GPA among the Superintendent’s Scholars.

She also received a 2018 Superintendent’s Scholarship which honors graduating high school seniors. This is the 18th year of the program. 62 seniors received $2,500 scholarships.

SEM Junior Shelly Goel competed at the Texas Science and Engineering Fair 2018 in San Antonio, TX. She won the highest award of the evening: Senior Division Best of Show Award given to the top project in the High School Division. This is the first time any student from Dallas ISD has won the Best of Show Award at the Texas Science and Engineering Fair.

She also won 1st Place Grand Physical Sciences Award in the Senior division after being awarded 1st Place in her Biomedical Engineering category. Shelly also won the 1st place Special Award from the Texas Board of Professional Engineers Future Engineer Award.

Additionally, Shelly qualified for and will be competing at the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in May in Pittsburgh, PA.

Shelly’s project is titled An Electronic Device With An Integrated Mobile App for Early Detection of Cardiovascular Diseases: A Low-Cost, Easy-To-Use, Non-Invasive Device And Comprehensive, Multi-Parametric Smartphone App. In her research, she developed a low-cost, easy-to-use, non-invasive electronic device to obtain a continuous blood pressure waveform at the Brachial artery. The device was integrated with a user-friendly “Blood Pressure Analytics” Smartphone App for real-time, multi-parametric analysis and comprehensive assessment of a patient’s cardiovascular condition. Minimal training and expertise is required to operate the Device and App allows for its integration in any environment including the home setting, thus creating a major global impact. Using this device as part of an annual wellness visit at primary care physician’s office can largely eliminate sudden “silent” deaths through monitoring of the progression of cardiovascular condition in middle-age adults and accordingly directing them to specialists for optimal treatment early on.